Zeta s Change Model

Zeta's Change Model

Along with the introduction of the new technology and the development of the ITSS application, the CSD first implemented some planned organizational changes, expanding the specialists' work to include work-in-progress documentation and adjusting the managers' work to take advantage of the real-time access to workload information. (Figure 12.2 represents the change model around the groupware technology that Zeta followed in its CSD.) The changes were anticipated before introducing the new technology. As specialists and managers began to work in new ways with the technology, a number of changes emerged in practice, such as the specialists developing norms to determine the quality and value of prior resolutions, and managers paying attention to documentation skills in hiring and evaluation decisions.

Figure 12.2: Zeta's Improvisational Management of Change over Time

Building on these anticipated and emergent changes, the CSD introduced a set of opportunity-based changes, creating junior-senior specialist partnerships to take advantage of the shared database and communication capabilities of the technology and then adding the new intermediary role in response to the unexpected problems with partnership and work reassignment. The CSD did not anticipate these changes at the start, nor did the changes emerge spontaneously in working with the new technology. Rather, the CSD conceived of and implemented the changes in situ and in response to the opportunities and issues that arose as it gained experience and better understood the new technology and their particular use of it. This change process around the groupware technology continued through the second year at Zeta when some anticipated organizational changes were followed by both emer gent and opportunity-based changes associated with unfolding events and the learning and experience gained by using the new technology in practice.

Overall, what we see here is an iterative and ongoing series of anticipated, emergent, and opportunity-based changes that allowed Zeta to learn from practical experience, respond to unexpected outcomes and capabilities, and adapt both the technology and the organization as appropriate. In effect, Zeta's change model cycles through anticipated, emergent, and opportunity-based organizational changes over time. It is a change model that explicitly recognizes the inevitability, legitimacy, and value of ongoing learning and change in practice.